Trampoline House’s new legal counselor focuses on making immigration law more understandable for asylum seekers and refugees. She offers free counseling every week.

Asrin is a lawyer from the University of Copenhagen with a focus on immigration law, and is working in Trampoline House as a legal counselor. In Asrin’s experience, the rules are often difficult to understand. In her opinion, this creates a certain need for good and professional lawyers to counsel and guide.

As a legal counselor in Trampoline House, Asrin hopes to make the asylum processes easier to understand. Therefore, she helps to explain the rules of asylum applications and family reunification, and also outlines the Danish systems and its rules for the refugees and asylum seekers that use Trampoline House. “But it can take months before a decision is made”, she says. Asrin has only been in the house for two months, and in her experience, legal cases often have long processinf times.

Asrin speaks both Danish, Farsi and Kurdish which means that in most cases, there is no need for extra translation. She experiences a great confidence with her clients, and a feeling that they are understood: “They feel that there are people who want to help others, and who want to make a difference”, she says.

Trampoline House offers free legal counselling to asylum seekers and refugees that need help in appealing their asylum cases, get help with family reunification or other cases, and here you can meet Asrin.

Asrins best advice is to ask a professional if you have questions about your case. Trampoline House offers free counselling every week:

Trampoline House offers free counseling for asylum seekers and refugees, but unfortunately, it’s not free for Trampoline House. Therefore, we need all the help we can get. Even small donations count! Please click here to see how you can donate.

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Professional legal counseling equips refugees with the means to navigate and participate in the Danish society. Some are dealing with asylum rejections, while others are unaware of their rights to maternity leave. Across a diversity of situations, Asrin Mesbah offers legal advice on a daily basis, in the safe environment of Trampoline House.

At Trampoline House, job training isn’t just job training. Trampoline House provides a safe space for social engagement and the consideration of individual needs. This is highly valued by the job training agency Servisio, which since April 2019 has directed citizens to Trampoline House.

50 of around 60 families in deportation center Sjælsmark have written an open letter to Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Minister for Immigration & Integration Mattias Tesfaye. In the letter, they reject a Sjælsmark employee’s claim that most them want to stay in Sjælsmark. “It is indefensible and unethical to put words in our mouth,” they write.

“This is a life experience that I would recommend to anyone just because it teaches you so much; staying at Trampoline House is a nice experience and you get to learn a lot. Personal change and achievement, lessons for you and your life; it’s not just like any other internship that you get to do in other NGOs or organisations.”

At Trampoline House’s house meetings, the participants are practicing democratic dialogue. Meanwhile, the government and the Danish People’s Party are restricting refugees’ possibilities for integration.

“Please listen to our voices. We do not want our loved children crying every day because of the horrible living conditions. Our children are asking, why are we living here? Asking, what shall we eat? We, parents have no answers but to cry also ourselves. We don't want our kids to suffer any more.”

Everyone who comes to Trampoline House now have the possibility to get help to find a job. Every Wednesday at 10am–12pm, volunteer job counselors arrange a job workshop that will strengthen the participants in their pursuit of the job market.

Support from Novo Nordisk Fonden, Lauritzen Fonden og private donationer, has made it possible for Trampoline House to hire a Children’s Club Coordinator. "The Children’s Club is to function as a nice place, where these children can find ease, security, positive relations, predictability and happiness," says Sara Ipsen

“The kids with citizenship got all that is needed, but not children who are growing up in the camps. I'm just sorry they don't have the same rights as Danish citizens. Also, they don't have the same opportunity, freedom, house, food, generally normal life.”

“There is discrimination on both sides. She wasn’t completely comfortable telling us that she was from Dansk Folkeparti. That’s why it’s an important thing for us to go to People’s Meeting and talk with people that are different from us.”